I am Petra with Mom's Apple Pie Company in Occoquan, Virginia and this is how we make an apple pie filling for a butter crust apple pie.

We use about probably two and three quarters pounds of apples, that's about three large apples. We use York apples whenever we can, we get them locally and they are just a really nice old-fashioned, kind of funny looking apple variety, but they are perfect because they are really flavorful and really crisp.

We also use Green-Golden Delicious at certain times of the year as well, but we actually have a really cool apple peeling machine at our big location in Sterling, Virginia. But if I am just making one apple pie, I'd like to just cut the apple up in to sections and take the crust off with the knife. It doesn't matter if all of the apples are sort of different, if all the pieces are sort of different shapes. You can have different shapes and it kind of makes for a really cute apple pie because the top of the apple pie will be really nice in a kind of bubbly looking, it's really cute and old-fashioned.

Some people leave the skins on because maybe some of the health nuts do that because the peels are where the good stuff is in apple pie, but if you want just a nice even texture, you can take all the peels off. So of course different apples are of different sizes, but roughly you just need under three pounds, just under three pounds.

So, you'll probably be using about three or four apples depending on their size and you can cut them up into pieces, just roughly about this, if you like larger edges, you can do it that way too. The important thing when you're making filling is to have an amount of sugar that's appropriate to what you are making, something like rhubarb pie of course it's going to be really tart and you are going to need a lot more sugar than an apple pie.

We use probably just under a cup of sugar for the apple pie and it's best to mix it up with the cornstarch in advance. Mix the cornstarch with the sugar, before adding it so you don't get crumbs of cornstarch in the pie. So just over a tablespoon of cornstarch to do it because apples aren't going to release as much juice as say like a blackberry pie. Just under a half teaspoon of salt will bring out some of the nice flavors of the apples and depending on your taste, we use probably about a teaspoon of cinnamon.

So you can just mix that up pretty well, so you don't see any little clumps of cornstarch. Then you just toss the apples with the sugar mixture, till they are nicely coated. You want to have a pretty even coat on each of little piece of apple, so that the cornstarch can absorb the juices and make it into sort of thicker pie filling kind of texture.

We don't add any water to our pies at Mom's Apple Pie Company because it's going to be just really nice intense fruit flavor in the pie. If you just have the appropriate amount of sugar and the appropriate amount of spice, you're going to have a really nice intense fruit flavor without kind of compromising that with water. The juices will kind of come out and solidify a little bit, but really what you want is the natural fruit flavor.

So, that is how you make a pie filling and we can go on and I'll show how to make it, put the whole pie together.